During emergency events, a volume of calls in a communication system increases tremendously, often congesting the communication system. The congestion of the system results in a low success rate of call completion for all types of users, including emergency personnel and in particular first responders. During these emergency events, there is a desire to give priority service to the first responders over normal commercial users. This priority will then lead to a higher probability of call completion for the first responders. One solution is to reserve the requisite quantity of bandwidth for the first responders at all times. This solution guarantees a higher call completion rate for first responders but results in wastage of bandwidth of the service provider. This reserved bandwidth is not available to commercial users, even during non emergency events such as sporting events. Another method would be to have the operator to manually detect the emergency events and subsequently, manually, reserve a requisite quantity of bandwidth for the first responders' communication devices. However, manual detection and reservation also have a substantially long inherent delay associated with reserving the bandwidth.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for reserving bandwidth for emergency services in an emergency event that provides acceptable probability of call completion for the first responders while minimizing bandwidth wastage and reservation delay.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.